Gene Kelly - Personal Life and Death

Personal Life and Death

Kelly was married to Betsy Blair for 15 years (1941–1957) and they had one child, Kerry. Kelly divorced Blair in 1957. In 1960, Kelly married his choreographic assistant Jeanne Coyne, who had divorced Stanley Donen in 1949 after a brief marriage. He remained married to Coyne from 1960 until her death in 1973 and they had two children, Bridget and Tim. He was married to Patricia Ward from 1990 until his death in 1996.

Kelly was a lifelong supporter of the Democratic Party which occasionally created difficulty for him as his period of greatest prominence coincided with the McCarthy era in the U.S. In 1947, he was part of the Committee for the First Amendment, the Hollywood delegation which flew to Washington to protest at the first official hearings by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. His first wife, Betsy Blair, was suspected of being a Communist sympathizer and when MGM, who had offered Blair a part in Marty (1955), were considering withdrawing her under pressure from the American Legion, Kelly successfully threatened MGM with a pullout from It's Always Fair Weather unless his wife was restored to the part. He used his position on the board of directors of the Writers Guild of America, West on a number of occasions to mediate disputes between unions and the Hollywood studios, and although he was frequently accused by some on the right of championing the unions, he was valued by the studios as an effective mediator.

Kelly was a major financial supporter of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), and he left thousands of pounds to NORAID in his will. He was raised as a Roman Catholic, but after becoming disenchanted by the Roman Catholic Church's support for Francisco Franco against the Spanish Republic, he officially severed his ties with the church in September 1939. This separation was prompted, in part, by a trip Kelly made to Mexico in which he became convinced of the Church’s failure in helping the poor. After his departure from the Catholic Church, Kelly became an agnostic and remained so, for the rest of his life. He retained a lifelong passion for sports and relished competition. He was known as a big fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers and New York Yankees. From the mid-1940s through the early 1950s, he and Blair organized weekly parties at their Beverly Hills home, and they often played an intensely competitive and physical version of charades, known as "The Game".

Kelly's health declined steadily in the late 1980s, and a stroke in July 1994 resulted in a seven week hospital stay. Another stroke in early 1995 left Kelly mostly bedridden in his Beverly Hills home. He died in his sleep on February 2, 1996, and his body was subsequently cremated, without any funeral or memorial services. Kelly's papers are currently housed at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.